Xander Kingsley and the Secret of Tucker's Cross (Book 1 of the Gemstone Series)

Chapter 1: Those Are Just For Little Kids... And Maybe Large Adults

"The nerve of that woman," Mrs. Forthright snarled in a whisper as she saw her neighbor once again handing out treats to the children boarding the bus.

"I bet she puts razor blades in them," Mr. Forthright stated next to her with contempt.

"Nonsense," his wife argued passionately, "she must obviously be poisoning them... slowly."

Their neighbor waved the bus away and smiled at the Forthright's, "Morning, Reyna! Morning Herbert!"

Mrs. Forthright feigned a smile, "Morning Mrs. Merriweather!"

"Hag," Mr. Forthright mumbled under his breath before returning inside with his wife.

Their neighbor, Mrs. Louisa Merriweather, was the strangest 112-year-old woman to ever walk the town of Monterey, California. In fact, she was the only 112-year-old woman in Monterey, California.

As she sat back down on her faded wicker rocking chair, the comb holding her thin, mint-gum colored hair up wobbled unreliably in place. Louisa leaned back in her chair, took a deep breath, and gazed through her enormous pair of thick, round glasses at the street, making her look like an owl. Smitten, her adoring old cat, jumped up onto her lap and purred as Louisa stroked her long luscious fur. A smile spread across Louisa's face, and all was as it should have been in the world.

Louisa admired her garden from the porch, making a mental list of all that needed doing today. She had a magnificent garden in her front yard that made the young Mr. and Mrs. Forthright across the street green with envy. Every year, her garden seemed to bloom more beautifully and hold more delicious fruits and vegetables than the year before and no one on Maple Court had ever seen or tasted such wonderful food than they had from her garden.

Mr. and Mrs. Forthright spent much of their time trying to make a better garden than her and, of course, they never truly succeeded. They spent hundreds of dollars every year getting special fish fertilizer with crushed up shells made specially in town just to see if that could get a better garden. But none of it mattered; they were always second in the world of suburban home gardens.

Unlike the rest of the old-timer's everyone knew, she lived alone at 9012 Maple Court in her house of deep blue with white trimming and a great brown door. Every morning, Louisa would get up almost too early and make homemade fresh treats for all the kids waiting for the school bus outside her house; everything from cookies and hand-pies, to breakfast burritos and lavender-lemonade. She would even give some to the bus driver, who could never quite refuse the deliciousities created within the kitchen of Mrs. Merriweather.

She had lived on Maple Court almost her whole life and knew all of her neighbors; she'd watched most of them grow up after all. Louisa even sent birthday cards to everyone on the block, though the Forthright's did their very best to ignore all they could about her.

However, the strangest things about Louisa Merriweather were not her hair or her age or even the fact that the comb she never took off clashed horribly with everything she wore.

She was strange for her uncanny ability to get people, even ones she didn't know, to do her dirty work (literally). Not only did she do this without being manipulative or cruel, but she also did it without paying any of them. Their reward for all the manual labor done at her house was a home-cooked dinner with her. Not to say that her meals weren't good, she seemed to have dozens of people over a week for dinner, but it was surprising that so many people were there for it.

Louisa was also strange for walking into Jacks Peak Park every day without fail. No one ever knew where she went or what she did, but she walked and she was back home every night before dinner, ready to feed the mass of people who had helped her that day.

The strangest thing about her, though, was the great tales she would tell her great-granddaughter, Diane, who would come every day to listen faithfully. Granny Lou would go on for hours about how she'd brandished swords with pirates and danced with the young and handsome Kings and Princes of countries that don't exist and, sometimes if you got her in just the right mood, she'd reminisce on how she'd risked her life to save a friend past saving.

Of course, little Diane didn't truly believe any of the stories Granny Lou told her, but she loved every word all the same. She idly wondered if she should write them down to read them when there was no more Granny Lou to tell them, but soon forgot after another pirate tale.

One day, there were no tasty, homemade treats for the children or the bus driver, her precious garden wilted without water under the hot sun, and there was no calm walk through the woods in the cool evening. Mrs. Louisa Merriweather had disappeared. Though the county police searched and searched, they couldn't find a single trace of the old woman and soon thereafter declared her deceased.

Diane was, naturally, very sad over the death of her beloved Granny Lou, but she was so young, grief hardly touched an innocent soul like hers. And even though she grew up, got married and had a family of her own, her heart clung to the wondrous stories her Granny Lou used to tell her on days when her life seemed much too dull, even for a busy woman like her.

Perhaps she remembered all the stories so well because she spent such a significant amount of her childhood listening to her Granny or perhaps it's because when Diane had her fifth and final child, he bore a mark on his left arm that left Diane amazed.

If you looked at it right, it resembled a four-pointed star. She wouldn't have thought twice about it if her Granny Lou hadn't shown her a mark on her arm that looked exactly like it.

Diane's thoughts churned in her head, running over the stories in her head again. If that mark held any truth in her grandmother's stories, what else was true? She convinced herself it was a genetic coincidence, and that she was misremembering things. For all the stories she had heard were just make-believe.

Just make-believe, she thought, smiling down at her youngest son on their way home.